PREVIEW: Tatiana Eva-Marie and The Avalon Jazz Band bring gypsy jazz to Saratoga Springs
12/05/24 at Caffe Lena
“People forget that [Django Reinhardt] wrote music that's gorgeous – beautiful melodies, beautiful ideas, and some very strange songs instead of just pop music. So I wanted to take out the guitarist from the equation completely and put my own stamp on it.”
“The best of both worlds” is a phrase that can apply to many things. For Tatiana Eva-Marie, the meanings are almost endless: she crosses boundary lines fluidly within her music, she honors musicians from decades past in contemporary ways and, most literally, she’s lived her life on two distinct continents. And what a life it’s been already.
Born in the French part of Switzerland, raised in Paris and now residing in New York City, the multi-instrumentalist has taken the jazz world by storm. Or as Vanity Fair put it, she’s “a millennial shaking up the jazz scene.” What’s even more impressive is that this whole journey began when she was a mere four years old.
“Music was nonstop; it's probably the first language I ever learned,” she recalls. “My mother's a classical violinist and my father's a composer, and a lead singer in a 1920s-style big band. Growing up, he was always at the piano. My mother gave lessons to children in our home, and we were always at the theater or backstage at a concert.”
Her adolescence in Paris was drastically unlike that of anyone I’ve ever known, recording multiple albums, acting on Parisian stages and writing/directing a pair of musicals, all before the age of 20. Additionally, she spent some time globe trotting before finally settling stateside in the city that never sleeps.
“They're opposites, in a way,” she says of her two homes. “Paris is a very bohemian place, and New York is not at all, right? So I think Paris is a good place to get inspired, and New York is a good place to get things done. Paris is for dreaming and getting lost and sitting at a cafe for five hours. You get all the inspiration, and then you come to New York and get to work.”
A prolific artist all around, Tatiana is currently promoting Djangology, her reinvention of songs originally composed by Django Reinhardt, the ‘father of gypsy jazz’. Creating this album involved taking in Reinhardt’s works through a different lens, adding entirely new elements and flourishes along the way.
“[Django] is so well known as this guitar wizard. People forget that he wrote music that's gorgeous – beautiful melodies, beautiful ideas, and some very strange songs instead of just pop music. So I wanted to take out the guitarist from the equation completely and put my own stamp on it.”
For Tatiana, Django is an artist near and dear to her heart, one that has influenced so much of her work along the way. Although it was a unique project to tackle for her, it was also a somewhat natural one in that respect.
“I feel very close to Django, and I've always adored the music,” she beams. “But I couldn't really participate because they're mostly instrumental compositions, and that's why I thought I should just write lyrics so that I can also take part in celebrating him.”
‘Gypsy jazz’ is a genre that gets thrown around a lot in our conversation, yet it’s certainly not what you’d call "mainstream". For the unenlightened like myself, Tatiana is gracious enough to offer a bit of a history lesson. In the ‘70s and ‘80s, there was something of a jazz revival in Europe, with local gypsy musicians at the helm. At the time, it of course wasn’t called gypsy jazz – just jazz. What differentiated it was a rather specific instrumentation – not quite what you’d expect when you hear the term ‘jazz’.
“It's very guitar forward and violin and accordion… you will not find a lot of trumpets or trombones in gypsy jazz,” Tatiana explains. “That’s what gives the color to the music, and that’s why it’s so recognizable.”
On December 5th, Tatiana will educate us some more from the stage at Caffe Lena. Her delightful take on decades-old compositions is a perfect match for the legendary folk venue, whose walls are imbued with music history. In addition to selections from Djangology, I for one am hoping to get a sneak peek of her soon-to-be-released A Whole New World. Due out in April, it’s a collection of old-school Disney songs performed with her signature flair and sung entirely in French.
“Growing up with a father who was a film composer, we watched movies all the time,” Tatiana remembers. “I really loved the Disney movies obviously, and I still absolutely adore them. So I've always wanted to have an album with Disney sung in French, because I don't know that it exists. To have a compilation of French Disney songs in the style of gypsy jazz is pretty unique, I think, and very fun. It's meant for not only my generation, but my generation who has children too, right? You can all listen to it and have fun together.
“We're doing the older stuff. I didn't want to mess with things like Frozen or anything. I wanted to focus on the films I grew up with. And it was actually such a huge challenge, because, again, with this project, I completely rearranged everything so the songs don't really sound like they do in the movies. It was sometimes very hard to find the right tone, to stay faithful to the song, especially when you're very attached to something you know. We all know these movies. We all know these songs. So, imagining something that is so much in our minds, and trying to take yourself away from it and see it from a different angle is so exciting and so difficult.”
It is clear that everything Tatiana tackles is a welcome challenge, and she encounters each one with passion and care. Much like A Whole New World will undoubtedly pay homage to a film and soundtrack empire, Djangology masterfully honors an enormously talented composer, one who has clearly given Tatiana so much inspiration over the years.
“I feel that, in many ways, this is my first album. I've recorded many albums in my life, but I feel like this one is the beginning of something. I didn't really write lyrics or arrange to the extent I've been doing now. It's always something I wanted to do, and I just fell in love with this creative process of collaborating through time with a hero of mine.”
Come see Tatiana Eva-Marie on stage at Caffe Lena on Thursday, December 5th. Tickets are available right here.
